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It is time that the best minds of the human species linked up and calculated the time frame within which technological changes aimed at achieving a sustainable global civilization must be completed. These changes demand massive amounts of resources and if we drag our feet by the time we decide to make these changes there will not be enough resources left. The cut off point for Business As Usual can and must be calculated.

They can also identify systems that are vital for the support of human life, and work on the task of reconfiguring these vital systems in ways that are sustainable.

Reconfiguring of these systems may include technological innovations as well as behavioral changes and mass perceptual modification.

The Sustainable Development Solutions Network may play the role of a species wide perceptual mechanism and as a strategic guidance system that may guide the human species towards sustainability.

The network may generate a global culture of tolerance that is vital for the freedom of thought and expression and since it is an organizational form quite different from the hierarchical pyramid that is the organizational form by which our current unsustainable global civilization is supported, the study of the dynamics that are required to generate networks and the examination of the systems and processes that support networks may be a necessary part of networking.

Acording to the author style, while reading I could foresee each next sentence. At the beginning, the author did not mention that with the release of the book The Limits to Growth in 1972 were opened new horizons for the world.

Since then, the world is viewed differently. This logic is applied and today and from, the comes my conclusion that quite simply, Global Solutions Network is created in order people from all profiles to participate there with their ideas and innovations in all segments of sustainability, for free. Obviously, humanity need new ideas to achieve progress. But unlike the past, this progress must be sustainable.
All due respect, but we already know these things. Nowhere is mentioned about the great importance of the resilience, because maybe today is too late for implementing sustainability. It also is not mentioned who will solve these problems and how? No, we do not need far-sighted companies to join the Sustainable Development Solutions Network, but instead of that, Sustainable Development Solutions Network should join its forces with the other International leading institutes and science elites in order to come up with NEW WORLD MODEL. Humanity desperately needs now world model based on System Thinking, System Dynamics, Cross-sectoral analysis IO- W. Leontief model, Life Cycle Analysis, Optimization and Mathematic, Digital Economy. These tools should be our new weapons in creating new policies and practices, creating a new sustainable, resilient and harmonious world in which the future generations could live in wellbeing and prosperity, before it is too late, because the decisions we took today create our future.

My congratulations to Dr. Jeffrey Sachs. First the initiation of the Global Masters of Development Practice and now the generation of the Sustainable Development Solutions Network.

Now tell us all how we can link up and feed in our perceptions of possible paths to sustainable futures so that all these perceptions can interact with one another to generate forward motion.

If the Sustainable Development Solutions Network is willing to do so, it can turn the second Global Conference of the Global Masters of Development Practice which hopefully will be held in Sri Lanka that links the most populous and fast developing countries in the world, into a forum where the perceptually adept can meet and feed in their perceptions. Many minds when networked can perceive much more than what any one mind can on its own.

One way to create a long-term sustainable economy on a global level, while concurrently resolving truly global environmental issues, is for there to be a big, visionary, awe-inspiring long-term goal toward which we, as humankind, are working. The Global Solutions Network needs to incorporate a bigger vision so that the entire planet is able to improve economically while simultaneously working toward environmental crisis resolution.

The goal, dream, or plan must be so large that its projected completion date is well beyond 25 or 50 years. The innovation and creativity that such a long-term project would require would also provide the new technologies and new sciences we need to solve our environmental issues, while creating new jobs in high tech industries globally.

Like the dream of putting a man on the moon in the space race of the 1960's spurred the US economy, and drove the innovation and creativity that gave us the technology we enjoy today, so too will a big dream or vision for the entire. why must it be for the entire world? Because, as was stated by Jeffrey Sachs in this article, and in many other articles and commentaries, we are inextricably connected, interdependent, and realistically even co-dependent with eachother at the state and social level.

We are no longer isolated, independent states existing in our own little sandboxes - we need eachother to grow, prosper, and even survive. We also need to know where we are going, and where we want to be. We need a long-range plan. Is not planning basic to everything we do?

Here is one example that would encourage sustainable growth, and give us the resources needed to address environmental concerns too - let's say that our goal is to build a self-sustaining city of at least 100,000 people....on Mars within 25 years. Can you imagine the new technologies, new sciences, new good paying jobs, that such a vision would require? Can you see that this vision would engage players from around the world, and that it could not be done by just one state, or even group of states, or single businesses alone, but would require cooperation and coordination at the global level.

Having a vision of this depth, with this level of long-term commitment, would give strength and purpose and drive to the global Solutions Network.

I agree with both Terry Sullivan and A.T.
The ideal global human society would be modeled on nature, where the local communities can govern and sustain themselves. Like individual organs doing their jobs in the most optimal way.
On the other hand today in our interconnected, interdependent world we cannot fully sustain ourselves, there is no individual or local society that could become self sufficient.
So over the local communities there is a need for global integration, coordination information flow, not in the form of the direct governance, deciding, instructing the local communities, more like providing the necessary information, like a data bank local communities can always turn to in case they have problems, questions.
Additionally an effective constant information network connecting all elements of the global system is crucial since the whole globe is a single ecosystem, thus for any decision, action each element has to take into consideration the whole system, otherwise we will keep running into the same problems we face today.
Only the initial setup is difficult and has to be preceded with global education, care, as soon as the system is running it becomes automatic and perfect since we will become harmonious with the vast natural system around us, while today we run constantly into problems, walls because we are going directly against the laws of the system.

I think that we might best follow the example of nature. Large global economic strategies will not do. We need localized economies, small regional projects, much more diverse, self sufficient, semi autonomous communities in order to create the resilience that we will need to avoid global collapse.

Almost half the food that is produced in the world is spoiled in transit. Subsistence agriculture means very little waste, i.e. twice as much food!

Fortunately, many places in the so called undeveloped world that haven't already been disrupted by global economic projects practice just this kind of economy.

Give people the tools and resources they need to take
care of themselves. Big projects should involve environmental stabilization, and protection from large predatory economic and political interests.

Seems well-meaing but misguided. Past breakthroughs have never really been the outcome of coordinated Grand Projects reaching for outsize, multifaceted goals. Likewise, most breakthroughs and visionaries were closer to riding/crystallising already occurring groundswells than they were to generating them.

Most of the problems facing the world today seem intractable only because they are part of a long cycle – they have been brought about by very deep-seated and fundamental principles of current socio-economic organisations. They remain unsolved because we are still unsure about whether the short-term disruption necessary to solve them is worth the long-term benefits.